The Mystic Hands of Doctor Strange #1 "Super Issue"

The Solicit:It’s the Sorcerer Supreme versus the magical might of the political terrorist known as the Doktor! Stephen Strange struggles with a decision to help a man crippled by his worst memories! And the Master of the Mystic Arts battles a demon in the streets of New York! All this and more in this all-new, all-action, all-black-and-white one-shot in the spirit of the Mighty Marvel Magazines of yore, but ALL-NOW in style! The magical mayhem never lets up for a moment over these four stories by some of Marvel’s hottest creators! Parental Advisory

I Say:Wow, a 48 page comic, –at least 22-30 pages of which are good, making this an awesome $2.50 or $3.00 comic. Sadly, it’s $4.00, which pushes it into the luxury/impulse-buy category.

The primary, feature-length tale is well written and drawn and features classic versions of Dr. Strange, his servant Wong, and girlfriend/wife Clea in an interesting story. The remaining pages are filled with two backup tales and a text piece with decent illustrations. The lack of color in the main section could be viewed as an artistic choice, but as the comic-length feature story seems to have been colored, then rendered in grayscale, on the whole this project feels as though Mighty Marvel decided to dump a noncanon issue of Dr. Strange (whose comic book and reigning title has currently been usurped by Brother Voodoo) and pad it into a “super issue” with a small prose piece and some hasty second stories.

Still, I liked most of this effort, but I can’t decide if it was worth the money. Perhaps Marvel has taken for granted that fans of the former Sorcerer Supreme are so starved for a decent Dr. Strange comic we're likely to buy anything.

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Huntsville resident James Graham is a former teacher and avid commentator on popular culture. Between work, school, and visits to the comic book store, he may be found online fighting injustice in his guise as the Neon Armadillo. Contact James here.